HOUR-GLASS THOUGHTS.

The bride stands waiting at the altar; the corpse lies waiting for

burial.

Love vainly implores of Death a reprieve; Despair vainly invokes his

coming.

The starving wretch, who purloins a crust, trembles in the hall of

Justice; liveried sin, unpunished, riots in high places.

Brothers, clad “in purple and fine linen, fare sumptuously every

day;” Sisters, in linsey-woolsey, toil in garrets and shrink,

trembling, from insults that no fraternal arm avenges.

The Village Squire sows, reaps and garners golden harvests; the

Parish Clergyman sighs, as his casting vote cuts down his already

meager salary.

The unpaid sempstress be-gems with tears the fairy festal robe; proud

beauty floats in it through the ball-room, like a thing of air.

Church spires point, with tapering fingers, to the rich man’s heaven;

Penitence, in rags, tearful and altarless, meekly stays its timid foot

at the threshold.

Sneaking Vice, wrapped in the labeled cloak of Piety, finds “open

sesame;” shrinking Conscientiousness, jostled rudely aside, weeps in

secret its fancied unworthiness.

The Editor grows plethoric on the applause of the public and mammoth

subscription lists; the _unrecognized_ journalist, who, behind the

scenes, mixes so deftly the newspaperial salad, lives on the smallest

possible stipend, and looks like an undertaker’s walking advertisement.

The Wife, pure, patient, loving, trustful, sits singing, by the

evening fire, repairing, with the busy fingers of economy, the

time-worn garment; the Husband, favored by darkness, seeks, with

stealthy steps and costly gifts, the syren of the hour, squandering

hundreds to win a smile which is ever in the market for the highest

bidder.

The polluted libertine, with foul lips, hackneyed heart, but polished

manners, finds smiling welcome at the beauteous lips of Virtue;

while, from the brow on which that libertine has ineffaceably written

“Magdalen,” “beauteous Virtue” turns scornfully away.

Wives rant of their “Woman’s Rights,” in public; Husbands eat bad

dinners and tend crying babies, at home.

Mothers toil in kitchens; Daughters lounge in parlors.

Fathers drive the plough; Sons drive tandem.

BOARDING HOUSE EXPERIENCE.

Mr. Ralph Renoux lived by his wits: i. e., he kept a boarding-house;

_taking in_ any number of ladies and gentlemen, who, in the

philanthropic language of his advertisement, “pined for the comforts

and elegancies of a home.”

Mr. Renoux’s house was at the court-end of the city; his drawing-room

was unexceptionably furnished, and himself, when “made up,” after

ten o’clock in the morning, quite _comme il faut_. Mrs. Renoux never

appeared; being, in the pathetic words of Mr. Renoux, “in a drooping,

invalid state:” nevertheless, she might be seen, by the initiated,

haunting the back stairs and entries, and with flying cap-strings,

superintending kitchen-cabinet affairs.

Mrs. Renoux was the unhappy mother of three unmarried daughters,

with red hair, and tempers to match; who languished over Byron, in

elegant _negligées_, of a morning, till after the last masculine had

departed; then, in curl-papers and calico long-shorts, performed, for

the absentees, the duty of chambermaids; peeping into valises, trunks,

bureaus, cigar boxes and coat pockets, and replenishing their perfumed

bottles, from the gentlemen’s toilet stands, with the most perfect

_nonchalance_. At dinner, they emerged from their chrysalis state, into

the most butterfly gorgeousness, and exchanged the cracked treble, with

which they had been ordering round the over-tasked maid-of-all-work, as

they affectionately addressed “Papa.”

* * * * *

At the commencement of my story, Renoux was as happy as a kitten

with its first mouse--having entrapped, with the bait of his alluring

advertisement, a widow lady with one child. “The comforts and

elegancies of a home;”--it was just what the lady was seeking:--how

very fortunate!

“Certainly, Madam,” said Renoux, doubling himself into the form of

the letter C. “I will serve your meals in your own room, if you prefer;

but, really, Madam, I trust you will sometimes grace the drawing-room

with your presence, as we have a very select little family of boarders.

Do you choose to breakfast at eight, nine, or ten, Madam? Do you

incline to Mocha? or prefer the leaves of the Celestial city? Are you

fond of eggs, Madam? Would you prefer to dine at four, or five? Do you

wish six courses, or more? There is the bell-rope, Madam. I trust you

will use it unsparingly, should any thing be omitted or neglected. I

am just on my way down town, and if you will favor me by saying what

you would fancy for your dinner to-day, (the market is full of every

thing--fish, flesh, fowl and game of all sorts,) you have only to

express a wish, Madam, and the thing is here; I should be miserable,

indeed, were the request of a _lady_ to be disregarded in _my_ house,

and that lady deprived of her natural protector. Which is it, Madam,

fish? flesh? or fowl? Any letters to send to the post-office, Madam?

Any commands any where? I shall be _too_ happy to be of service”;--and

bending to the tips of his patent leather toes, Mr. Renoux, facing the

lady, bowed obsequiously and Terpsichore-ally out of the apartment.

The dinner hour came. An Irish servant-girl came with it; and drawing

out a table at an Irish angle upon the floor, tossed over it a tumbled

table-cloth; placed upon it a castor, minus one leg, some cracked

salt-cellars and tumblers; then laid some knives, left-handed, about

the table; then, withdrew, to reappear with the result of Mr. Renoux’s

laborious research “in the market filled with every thing,” viz: a

consumptive looking mackerel, whose skin clung tenaciously to its back

bone, and a Peter Schemel looking chicken, which, in its life-time,

must have had a vivid recollection of Noah and the forty days’ shower.

This was followed by a dessert of stale baker’s tarts, compounded of

lard and dried apples; and twenty-four purple grapes.

* * * * *

The next morning, Mr. Renoux tip-toed in, smirking and bowing, as

if the bill of fare had been the most sumptuous in the world, and

expressed the greatest astonishment and indignation, that “the stupid

servant had neglected bringing up the other courses which he had

provided;” then he inquired “how the lady had rested;” and when she

preferred a request for another pillow, (there being only six feathers

in the one she had,) he assured her that it should be in her apartment

in less than one hour. A fortnight after, he expressed the most intense

disgust, that “the rascally upholsterer” had not yet sent _what he

had never ordered_. Each morning, Mr. Renoux presented himself, at a

certain hour, behind a very stiff dickey, and offered the lady the

morning papers. Seating himself on the sofa, he would remark that--it

was a very fine day, and that affairs in France appeared to be _in

statu quo_; or, that the Czar had ordered his generals to occupy the

principalities; that Gorchakoff was preparing to cross the Danube;

that the Sultan had dispatched Omar Pasha to the frontiers; that the

latter gentleman had presented his card to Gorchakoff, on the point of

a yataghan, which courtesy would probably lead to----something else!

During one of these agreeable calls, the lady took occasion slightly

to object to Betty’s nibbling the tarts, as she brought them up for

dinner; whereupon, Mr. Renoux declared, upon the honor of a Frenchman,

that “she should be pitched out of the door immediately, if not sooner;

and an efficient servant engaged to take her place.”

The next day, the “efficient servant” came in, broom in hand,

whistling “Oh, Susanna,” and passing into the little dressing-room,

to “put it to rights,” amused herself by trying on the widow’s best

bonnet, and polishing her teeth and combing her hair with that lady’s

immaculate and individual head-brush and tooth-brush. You will not be

surprised to learn, that their injured and long-suffering owner, took a

frantic and “French leave” the following morning, in company with her

big and little band-boxes; taking refuge under the sheltering roof of

Madame Finfillan.

* * * * *

Madame Finfillan was a California widow; petite, plump and

pretty--who bore her cruel bereavement with feminine philosophy, and

slid round the world’s rough angles with a most eel-like dexterity.

In short, she was a Renoux in petticoats. Madame welcomed the widow

with great pleasure, because, as she said, she “wished to fill her

house only with first-class boarders;” and the widow might be assured

that she had the apartments fresh from the diplomatic hands of the

Spanish Consul, who would on no account have given them up, had not his

failing health demanded a trip to the Continent. Madame also assured

the widow, that, (although she said it herself,) every part of her

house would bear the closest inspection; that those vulgar horrors,

cooking butter, and diluted tea, were never seen on her Epicurean

table; that they breakfasted at ten, lunched at two, dined at six, and

enjoyed themselves in the _interim_; that her daughter, Miss Clara,

was perfectly well qualified to superintend, when business called her

mother away. And that nobody knew, (wringing her little white hands,)

how _much_ business she had to do, what with trotting round to those

odious markets, trading for wood and coal, and such like uninteresting

things; or what _would_ become of her, had she not some of the best

friends in the world to look after her, in the absence of Mons.

Finfillan.

--Madame then caught up the widow’s little boy, and, half smothering

him with kisses, declared that there was nothing on earth she loved so

well as children; that there were half a dozen of them in the house,

who loved her better than their own fathers and mothers, and that their

devotion to her was at times quite touching--(and here she drew out an

embroidered pocket handkerchief, and indulged in an interesting little

sniffle behind its cambric folds.) Recovering herself, she went on

to say, that the manner in which some boarding-house keepers treated

children, was perfectly inhuman: that she had a second table for them,

to be sure, but it was loaded with delicacies, and that she always

put them up a little school lunch herself; on which occasion there

was always an amicable little quarrel among them, as to which should

receive from her the greatest number of kisses; also, that it was her

frequent practice to get up little parties and tableaux, for their

amusement. “But here is my daughter, Miss Clara,” said she, introducing

a fair-haired young damsel, buttoned up in a black velvet jacket, over

a flounced skirt.

“Just sixteen yesterday,” said Madame: “naughty little blossom,

budding out so fast, and pushing her poor mamma off the stage;” (and

here Madame paused for a compliment, and looking in the opposite

mirror, smoothed her jetty ringlets complacently.) “Yes, every

morning little blossom’s mamma looks in the glass, expecting to find

a horror of a gray hair. But what makes my little pet so pensive

to-day?--thinking of her little lover, hey? Has the naughty little

thing a thought she does not share with mamma? But, dear me!”--and

Madame drew out a little dwarf watch; “I had quite forgotten it is the

hour Mons. Guigen gives me my guitar lesson. Adieu, dinner at six,

remember;”--and Madame tripped, coquettishly, out of the room.

Yes; “dinner at six.” Gold salt-cellars, black waiters, and

finger-bowls; satin chairs in the parlor, and pastilles burning on

the side-table; but the sheets on the beds all torn to ribbons; the

boarders allowed but one towel a week; every bell-rope divorced from

its bell; the locks all out of order on the chamber doors; the “dear

children’s” bill of fare at the “second table”--sour bread, watery

soup, and cold buckwheat cakes;--and “dinner at six,” only an invention

of the enemy, to save the expense of one meal a day--the good, cozy,

old-fashioned tea.

Well, the boarders were all “trusteed” by Madame’s butcher, baker

and milkman; Miss Clara eloped with the widow’s diamond ring and Mons.

Peneke; and Madame, who had heard that Mons. Finfillan was “among the

things that _were_,” was just about running off with Mons. Guigen,

when her liege lord suddenly returned from California, with damaged

constitution and morals, a dilapidated wardrobe and empty coffers.

Moral. Beware of boarding-houses: in the words of Shakspeare,

Let those keep house who ne’er kept house before

And those who have kept house, keep house the more.

A GRUMBLE FROM THE (H)ALTAR.

This is the second day I’ve come home to dinner, without that yard of

pink ribbon for Mrs. Pendennis. Now, we shall have a _broil_, not down

in the bill of fare. Julius Cæsar; if she only knew how much I have

to do; but it would make no difference if she did. I used to think a

fool was easily managed. Mrs. Pendennis has convinced me that _that_

was a mistake. If I try to reason with her, she talks round and round

in a circle, like a kitten chasing its tail. If I set my arms a-kimbo,

and look threatening, she settles into a fit of the sulks, to which a

November drizzle of a fortnight’s duration is a millenium. If I try

to get round her by petting, she is as impudent as the----. Yes, just

about. Jerusalem! what a thing it is to be married! And yet, if an

inscrutable Providence should bereave me of Mrs. Pendennis, I am not at

all sure----good gracious, here she comes! Do you know I’d rather face

one of Colt’s revolvers this minute, than that four feet of womanhood?

Isn’t it astonishing, the way they do it?

A WICK-ED PARAGRAPH.

CONNUBIAL.--Mr. Albert Wicks, of Coventry, under date of December

28th, advertised his wife as having left his bed and board; and

now, under date of March 26th, he appends to his former notice, the

following:

“Mrs. Wicks, if you ever intend to come back and live with me any

more, you must come now or not at all.

“I love you as I do my life, and if you will come now, I will

forgive you for all you have done and threatened to do, which I

can prove by three good witnesses: and if not, I shall attend to

your case without delay, and soon, too.”

There, now, Mrs. Wicks, what is to be done? “Three good witnesses!”

think of _that_! What the mischief have you been about? Whatever it is,

Mr. Wicks is ready to “love you like his life.” Consistent Mr. Wicks!

Now take a little advice, my dear innocent, and don’t allow yourself

to be badgered or frightened into anything. None but a coward ever

threatens a woman. Put that in your memorandum book. It’s all bluster

and braggadocio. Thread your darning-needle, and tell him you are ready

for him--ready for anything except his “loving you like his life;” that

you could not possibly survive that infliction, without having your

“wick” snuffed entirely out.

Sew away, just as if there were not a domestic earthquake brewing

under your connubial feet. If it sends you up in the air, it sends

him, too--there’s a pair of you! Put _that_ in his Wick-ed ear! Of

course he will sputter away, as if he had swallowed a “Roman candle,”

and you can take a nap till he gets through, and then offer him your

smelling-bottle to quiet his nerves.

That’s the way to quench him!

MISTAKEN PHILANTHROPY.

“Don’t moralize to a man who is on his back. Help him up, set him

firmly on his feet, and then give him advice and means.”

There’s an old-fashioned, verdant piece of wisdom, altogether

unsuited for the enlightened age we live in! Fished up, probably, from

some musty old newspaper, edited by some eccentric man troubled with

that inconvenient appendage, called a heart! Don’t pay any attention

to it. If a poor wretch (male or female) comes to you for charity,

whether allied to you by your own mother, or mother Eve, put on the

most stoical, “get thee behind me” expression you can muster. Listen to

him with the air of a man who “thanks God he is not as other men are.”

If the story carry conviction with it, and truth and sorrow go hand in

hand, button your coat up tighter over your pocket-book, and give him

a piece of--good advice! If you know anything about him, try to rake

up some imprudence or mistake he may have made in the course of his

life, and bring that up as a reason why you can’t give him anything

more substantial, and tell him that his present condition is probably a

salutary discipline for those same peccadilloes! Ask him more questions

than there are in the Assembly’s Catechism, about his private history,

and when you’ve pumped him high and dry, try to teach him (on an empty

stomach,) the “duty of submission.” If the tear of wounded sensibility

begin to flood the eye, and a hopeless look of discouragement settle

down upon the face, “wish him well,” and turn your back upon him as

quick as possible.

Should you at any time be seized with an unexpected spasm of

generosity, and make up your mind to bestow some worn out, old garment

that will hardly hold together till the recipient gets it home, you’ve

bought him, body and soul; of course you are entitled to the gratitude

of a life-time! If he ever presumes to think differently from you after

that, he’s an “ungrateful wretch,” and “ought to suffer.” As to the

“golden rule,” that was made in old times; everything is changed now;

’taint suited to our meridian.

People shouldn’t get poor; if they do, you don’t want to be bothered

with it. It’s disagreeable; it hinders your digestion. You’d rather see

Dives than Lazarus; and it’s my opinion your taste will be gratified in

that particular, (in the other world, if it is not in this!)

INSIGNIFICANT LOVE.

“You, young, loving creature, who dream of your lover by night

and by day--you fancy that he does the same of you? One hour,

perhaps, your presence has captivated him, subdued him even to

weakness; the next, he will be in the world, working his way as a

man among men, forgetting, for the time being, your very existence.

Possibly, if you saw him, his outer self, so hard and stern,

so different from the self you know, would strike you with pain.

Or else his inner and diviner self, higher than you dream of,

would turn coldly from _your insignificant love_.”

“Insignificant love!!” I like that. More especially when out of ten

couple you meet, nine of the wives are as far above their husbands, in

point of mind, as the stars are above the earth. For the credit of the

men I should be sorry to say how many of them would be minus coats,

hats, pantaloons, cigars, &c., were it not for their wives’ earnings;

or how many smart speeches and able sermons have been concocted by

their better halves, (while rocking the cradle,) to be delivered to the

public at the proper time, parrot fashion, by the lords of creation.

Wisdom will die with the men, there’s no gainsaying that!

Catch a smart, talented, energetic woman, and it will puzzle you to

find a man that will compare with her for goaheadativeness. The more

obstacles she encounters, the harder she struggles, and the more you

try to put her down, the more you won’t do it. Children are obliged

to write under their crude drawings, “this is a dog,” or, “this is a

horse.” If it were not for coats and pants, we should be obliged to

label, “this is a man,” in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred!

“Insignificant love!” Why does a man offer himself a dozen times

to the same woman? Pity to take so much pains for such a trifle!

“Insignificant love!” Who gets you on your feet again, when you fail

in business, by advancing the nice little sum settled on herself

by her anxious pa? Who cheers you up, when her nerves are all in a

double-and-twisted knot, and you come home with your face long as the

moral law? Who wears her old bonnet three winters, while you smoke,

and drive, and go to the opera? Who sits up till the small hours, to

help you find the way up your own staircase? Who darns your old coat,

next morning, just as if you were a man, instead of a brute? And who

scratches any woman’s eyes out, who dares insinuate that her husband is

superior to you!

“Insignificant love!” I wish I knew the man who wrote that article!

I’d appoint his funeral to-morrow, and it should come off too!!

A MODEL MARRIED MAN.

Cobbett says that for two years after his marriage, he retained

his disposition to flirt with pretty women; but at last his

wife--probably having lost all hope of his reforming

himself--gently tapped him upon the arm, and remarked--

“Don’t do that. I do not like it.”

Cobbett says:--“That was quite enough. I had never thought on

the subject before; one hair of her head was more dear to me than

all other women in the world; and this I knew that she knew; but

now I saw that this was not all that she had a right to from me.

_I saw that she had the further claim upon me that I should

abstain from everything that might induce others to believe that

there was any other woman for whom, even if I were at liberty, I

had any affection._”

Now I suppose most women, on reading that, would roll up their eyes

and think unutterable things of Mr. Cobbett! But, had _I_ borne his

musical name, and had that fine speech been addressed to me, I should

immediately have dismissed the----house-maid!

It is not in any masculine to get on his knees that way, without a

motive! I tell you, that man was a humbug! overshot the mark, entirely;

promised ten times as much as a sinful masculine could ever perform. If

he’d said about _a quarter part_ of that, you might have believed him.

His affection for Mrs. Cobbett was skin-deep. He would have flirted

with every one of you, the minute her back was turned, to the end of

the electrical chapter!

A man who is magnetized as he ought to be, don’t waste his precious

time making such long-winded, sentimental speeches. You never need

concern yourself, when such a glib tongue makes love to you. Go on with

your knitting; _he’s convalescent!_ getting better of his complaint

fast. Now mind what I tell you; that Cobbett was a humbug!

MEDITATIONS OF PAUL PRY, JUN.

Not a blessed bit of gossip have I heard for a whole week! Nobody’s

run off with anybody’s wife; not a _single_ case of “Swartwouting;”

no minister’s been to the theatre; and my friend Tom, editor of the

“Sky Rocket,” (who never cares whether a rumor be true or false, or

where it hits, so that it makes a paragraph,) is quite in despair. He’s

really afraid the world is growing virtuous--says it would be a hundred

dollars in his pocket, to get hold of a bit of scandal in such a dearth

of news; and if the accused party gets obstreperous, he’d just as lief

publish one side as the other! The more fuss the better; all he’s

afraid of is, they won’t think it worth noticing!

Ah! we’ve some new neighbors in that house; pretty woman there, at

the window; glad of that! In the first place, it rests my eyes to look

at them; in the next place, where there’s a pretty woman, you may be

morally certain there’ll be mischief, sooner or later, i. e. if they

don’t have somebody like me to look after them; therefore I shall

keep my eye on her. That’s her husband in the room, I’m certain of

it, (for all the while she is talking to him, she’s looking out the

window!) There he goes down street to his business--a regular humdrum,

henpecked, “ledger” looking Lilliputian. Was not cut out for her,

that’s certain! Well, my lady’s wide awake enough! Look at her eye! No

use in pursing up that pretty mouth!--that eye tells the story! Nice

little plump figure; coquettish turn of the head, and a spring to her

step. Well, well, I’ll keep my eyes open.

Just as I expected! there’s a young man ringing at the door; “patent

leather,” “kid gloves,” white hand, ring on the little finger--hope she

won’t shut the blinds now. There! she has taken her seat on the sofa

at the back part of the room. She don’t escape _me_ that way, while I

own a spy-glass! Jupiter! if he is not twisting her curls round his

fingers! Wonder how old “Ledger” would like _that_!

Tuesday.--Boy at the door with a bouquet. Can’t ring the bell; I’ll

just step out and offer to do it for him, and learn who sent it! “Has

orders not to tell;” umph! _I’ve_ no orders “not to tell;” so here goes

a note to Ledger about it; that little gipsy is stepping RATHER too

high.

Wednesday.--Here I am tied up for a month at least; scarcely a whole

bone in my body, to say nothing of the way my feelings are hurt. How

did I know that young man was “her brother?” Why couldn’t Ledger

correct my mistake in a gentlemanly way, without daguerreotyping it

on my back with a horsewhip? It’s true I am not always correct in my

suspicions, but he ought to have looked at my motives! Suppose it

hadn’t been her brother, now! It’s astonishing, the ingratitude of

people. It’s enough to discourage all my attempts at moral reform!

Well, it’s no use attacking that hornet’s nest again; but I’ve no

doubt some of the commandments are broken somewhere; and with the help

of some “opodeldoc” I’ll get out and find where it is!

SUNSHINE AND YOUNG MOTHERS.

FOLLY. For girls to expect to be happy without marriage. Every

woman was made for a mother, consequently, babies are as necessary

to their “peace of mind,” as health. If you wish to look at

melancholy and indigestion, look at an old maid. If you would take

a peep at sunshine, look in the face of a young mother.

“Young mothers and sunshine”! They are worn to fiddle strings before

they are twenty-five! When an old lover turns up, he thinks he sees his

grandmother, instead of the dear little Mary who used to make him feel

as if he should crawl out of the toes of his boots! Yes! my mind is

_quite_ made up about _matrimony_; it’s a _one-sided_ partnership.

“Husband” gets up in the morning, and pays his _devoirs_ to the

looking-glass; curls his fine head of hair; puts on an immaculate shirt

bosom; ties an excruciating cravat; sprinkles his handkerchief with

cologne; stows away a French roll, an egg, and a cup of coffee; gets

into the omnibus, looks at the pretty girls, and makes love between

the pauses of business during the forenoon _generally_. Wife must

“hermetically seal” the windows and exclude all the fresh air, (because

the baby had “the snuffles” in the night;) and sits gasping down to

the table more dead than alive, to finish her breakfast. Tommy turns

a cup of hot coffee down his bosom; Juliana has torn off the strings

of her school bonnet; James “wants his geography covered;” Eliza can’t

find her satchel; the butcher wants to know if she’d like a joint of

mutton; the milkman would like his money; the iceman wants to speak to

her “just a minute;” the baby swallows a bean; husband sends the boy

home from the store to say _his partner_ will dine with him; the cook

leaves “all flying,” to go to her “sister’s dead baby’s wake,” and

husband’s thin coat must be ironed before noon.

“_Sunshine and young mothers!_” Where’s my smelling bottle?

UNCLE BEN’S ATTACK OF SPRING FEVER, AND HOW HE GOT CURED.

“It is not possible that you have been insane enough to go to

housekeeping in the country, for the summer? Oh, you ought to hear my

experience,” and Uncle Ben wiped the perspiration from his forehead, at

the very thought.

Yes, I tried it once, with city habits and a city wife: got rabid

with the dog days, and nothing could cure me but a nibble of green

grass. There was Susan, you know, who never was off a brick pavement

in her life, and didn’t know the difference between a cheese and a

grindstone.

Well, we ripped up our carpets, and tore down our curtains, and

packed up our crockery, and nailed down our pictures, and eat dust for

a week, and then we emigrated to Daisy Ville.

Could I throw up a window or fasten back a blind in that house,

without sacrificing my suspenders and waistband button? No, sir! Were

not the walls full of Red Rovers? Didn’t the doors fly open at every

wind gust? Didn’t the roof leak like the mischief? Was not the chimney

leased to a pack of swallows? Was not the well a half a mile from the

house?

Oh, you needn’t laugh. Instead of the comfortable naps to which I had

been accustomed, I had to sleep with one eye open all night, lest I

shouldn’t get into the city in time. I had to be shaving in the morning

before a rooster in the barn-yard had stirred a feather; swallowed my

coffee and toast by steam, and then, still masticating, made for the

front door. There stood Peter with my horse and gig,--for I detest your

cars and omnibuses. On the floor of the chaise was a huge basket in

which to bring home material for the next day’s dinner; on the seat was

a dress of my wife’s to be left “without fail” at Miss Sewing Silk’s,

to have the forty-seventh hook moved one-sixth of a degree higher up

on the back. Then there was a package of shawls from Tom Fools & Co.,

to be returned, and a pair of shoes to carry to Lapstone, who was to

select another pair for me to bring out at night; and a demijohn to be

filled with Sherry. Well, I whipped up Bucephalus, left my sleeping

wife and babies, and started for town; cogitating over an intricate

business snarl, which bade defiance to any straightening process. I

hadn’t gone half a mile before an old maid (I hate old maids) stopped

me to know if I was going into town, and if I was, if I wouldn’t

take her in, as the omnibusses made her sick. She said she was niece

to Squire Dandelion, and “had a few chores to do a shopping.” So I

took her in, or rather, she took _me_ in, (but she didn’t do it but

once--for I bought a sulkey next day!) Well, it came night, and I was

hungry as a Hottentot, for I never could dine, as your married widowers

_pro tem_ do, at eating-houses, where one gravy answers for flesh, fish

and fowl, and the pudding-sauce is as black as the cook’s complexion.

So I went round on an empty stomach, hunting up my _expressman

parcels_, and wending my way to the stable with arms and pockets

running over. When I got home, found my wife in despair, no tacks in

the house to nail down carpets, and not one to be had at the store in

the village; the cook had deserted because she couldn’t do without “her

_city privileges_,” (meaning Jonathan Jones, the “dry dirt” man); and

the chambermaid, a buxom country girl with fire red hair, was spinning

round the crockery (a la Blitz) because she “couldn’t eat with the

family.”

Then Charley was taken with the croup in the night, and in my fright

I put my feet into my coat sleeves, and my arms into my pants, and put

on one of my wife’s ruffles instead of a dicky, and rode three miles in

a pelting rain, for some “goose grease” for his throat.

Then we never found out till cherries, and strawberries, and peaches

were ripe, how many _friends_ (?) we had. There was a horse hitched at

every rail in the fence, so long as there was anything left to eat on

a tree in the farm; but if my wife went in town shopping, and called

on any of them, they were “out, or engaged;”--or if at home, had “just

done dinner, and were going to ride.”

Then there was no school in the neighborhood for the children, and

they were out in the barn-yard feeding the pigs with lump sugar, and

chasing the hens off the nest to see what was the prospect for eggs,

and making little boats of their shoes, and sailing them in the pond,

and milking the cow in the middle of the day, &c.

Then if I dressed in the morning in linen coat, thin pants, and straw

hat, I’d be sure to find the wind “dead east” when I got into the city;

or if I put on broadcloth and fixins to match, it would be hotter than

Shadrach’s furnace, all day--while the dense morning fog would extract

the starch from my dicky and shirt-bosom, till they looked very like a

collapsed flapjack.

Then our meeting-house was a good two miles distant, and we had to

walk, or stay at home; because my factotum (Peter) wouldn’t stay on

the farm without he could have the horse Sundays to go to Mill Village

to see his affianced Nancy. Then the old farmers leaned on my stone

wall, and laughed till the tears came into their eyes, to see “the

city gentleman’s” experiments in horticulture, as they passed by “to

meetin’.”

Well, sir, before summer was over, my wife and I looked as jaded as

omnibus horses--she with chance “help” and floods of city company,

and I with my arduous duties as _express man_ for my own family in

particular, and the neighbors in general.

And now here we are--“No. 9 Kossuth square.” Can reach anything we

want, by putting our hands out the front windows. If, as the poet

says, “_man made the town_,” all I’ve got to say is--he understood his

business!

THE AGED MINISTER VOTED A DISMISSION.

[Illustration: “Your minister is getting ‘superannuated,’ is he? Well,

call a parish meeting, and vote him a dismission.”]

Your minster is “superannuated,” is he? Well, call a parish meeting,

and vote him a dismission; hint that his usefulness is gone; that he

is given to repetition; that he puts his hearers to sleep. Turn him

adrift, like a blind horse, or a lame house dog. Never mind that he

has grown gray in your thankless service--that he has smiled upon your

infants at the baptismal font, given them lovingly away in marriage to

their heart’s chosen, and wept with you when Death’s shadow darkened

your door. Never mind that he has laid aside his pen, and listened

many a time, and oft, with courteous grace to your tedious, prosy

conversations, when his moments were like gold dust; never mind that he

has patiently and uncomplainingly accepted at your hands, the smallest

pittance that would sustain life, because “the Master” whispered in his

ear, “Tarry here till I come.” Never mind that the wife of his youth,

whom he won from a home of luxury, is broken down with privation and

fatigue, and _your_ thousand unnecessary demands upon her strength,

patience, and time. Never mind that his children, at an early age, were

exiled from the parsonage roof, because there was not “bread enough

and to spare,” in their father’s house. Never mind that his library

consists only of a Bible, a Concordance, and a Dictionary; and that to

the luxury of a religious newspaper, he has been long years a stranger.

Never mind that his wardrobe would be spurned by many a mechanic in

our cities; never mind that he has “risen early and sat up late,” and

tilled the ground with weary limbs, for earthly “manna,” while his

glorious intellect lay in fetters--_for you_. Never mind all _that_;

call a parish meeting, and vote him “superannuated.” Don’t spare him

the starting tear of sensibility, or the flush of wounded pride, by

delicately offering to settle a colleague, that your aged pastor may

rest on his staff in grateful, gray-haired independence. No! _turn the

old patriarch out_; give him time to go to the moss-grown church-yard,

and say farewell to his unconscious dead, and then give “the right hand

of fellowship” to some beardless, pedantic, noisy college boy, who will

save your sexton the trouble of pounding the pulpit cushions; and who

will tell you and the Almighty, in his prayers, all the political news

of the week.

THE FATAL MARRIAGE.

A very pretty girl was Lucy Lee. Don’t ask me to describe her; stars,

and gems, and flowers, have long since been exhausted in depicting

heroines. Suffice it to say, Lucy was as pretty a little fairy as ever

stepped foot in a slipper or twisted a ringlet.

Of course, Lucy knew she was pretty; else why did the gentlemen stare

at her so? Why did Harry Graham send her so many bouquets? Why did Mr.

Smith and Mr. Jones try to sit each other out in an evening call? Why

were picnics and fairs postponed, if she were engaged or ill? Why did

so many young men request an introduction? Why did all the serenaders

come beneath her window? Why was a pew or omnibus never full when she

appeared at the door? And last, though not least, why did all the women

imitate and hate her so?

We will do Miss Lucy the justice to say, that she bore her blushing

honors very meekly. She never flaunted her conquest in the faces of

less attractive feminines; no, Lucy was the farthest remove from a

coquette; but kind words and bright smiles were as natural to her as

fragrance to flowers, or music to birds. She never _tried_ to win

hearts; and between you and me, I think that’s the way she did it.

Grave discussions were often held about Lucy’s future husband;

the old maids scornfully asserting that “beauties generally pick up

a crooked stick at last,” while the younger ones cared very little

_whom_ she married, if she only _were_ married and out of _their_ way.

Meanwhile, Lucy smiled at her own happy thoughts, and sat at her little

window on pleasant, summer evenings, watching for Harry, (poor Harry,)

who, when he came, was at a loss to know if he had ever given her

little heart one flutter, so merrily did she laugh and chat with him.

Skillful little Lucy, it was very right you shouldn’t let him peep into

_your_ heart till he had opened a window in _his own_.

Lucy’s papa didn’t approve of late hours or lovers; moonlight

he considered but another name for rheumatism; at nine o’clock,

precisely, he rung the bell each evening for family prayers; and

when the Bible came in lovers were expected to go out: in case they

were obtuse,--chairs set back against the wall, or an extra lamp

blown out, or the fire taken apart, were hints sufficiently broad to

be understood; and they generally answered the purpose. Miss Lucy’s

little lamp, glowing immediately after from her bed-room window, gave

the _finale_ to the “Mede and Persian” order of Mr. Lee’s family

arrangements.

Still, Lee house was not a hermitage, by any means. More white

cravats and black coats passed over “Deacon” Lee’s threshold, than

into any hotel in Yankeedom. Little Lucy’s mother, too, was a modern

Samaritan, never weary of experimenting on their dyspeptic and

bronchial affections; while Lucy herself (bless her kind heart) knew

full well that two-thirds of them had large families, empty purses,

and more Judases and Paul Prys than “Aarons and Hurs” in their

congregations.

Among the _habitués_ of Lee house, none were so acceptable to Lucy’s

father, as Mr. Ezekiel Clark, a bachelor of fifty, an ex-minister, and

now an agent for some “Benevolent Society.” Ezekiel had an immensely

solemn face; and behind this convenient mask he was enabled to carry

out, undetected, various little plans, ostensibly for the “society’s”

benefit, but privately--for his own personal aggrandizement. When

Ezekiel’s opinion was asked, he crossed his hands and feet, and

fastened his eyes upon the wall, in an attitude of the deepest

abstraction, while his questioner stood on one leg, awaiting, with the

most intense anxiety, the decision of such an oracular Solomon. Well,

not to weary you, the long and short of it was, that Solomon was a

stupid fool, who spent his time trying to humbug the religious public

in general, and Deacon Lee in particular, into the belief that had _he_

been consulted before this world was made, he could have suggested

great and manifold improvements. As to Deacon Lee, no cat ever tossed

a poor mouse more dexterously than he played with the deacon’s free

will; all the while very demurely pocketing the spoils in the shape of

“donations” to the “society,” with which he appeased his washerwoman

and tailor, and transported himself across the country, on trips to

Newport, Saratoga, &c., &c.

His favorite plan was yet to be carried out; which was no more or

less than a modest request for the deacon’s pretty daughter, Lucy, in

marriage. Mr. Lee rubbed his chin, and said, “Lucy was nothing but a

foolish little girl;” but Ezekiel overruled it, by remarking that that

was so much the more reason she should have a husband some years her

senior, with some knowledge of the world, qualified to check and advise

her; to all of which, after an extra pinch of snuff, and another look

into Ezekiel’s oracular face, Deacon Lee assented.

Poor little Lucy! Ezekiel knew very well that her father’s word was

law, and when Mr. Lee announced him as her future husband, she knew she

was just as much Mrs. Ezekiel Clark, as if the bridal ring had been

already slipped on her fairy finger. She sighed heavily, to be sure,

and patted her little foot nervously, and when she handed him his tea,

thought he looked older than ever; while Ezekiel swallowed one cup

after another, till his eyes snapped and glowed like a panther’s in

ambush. That night poor Lucy pressed her lips to a faded rose, the gift

of Harry Graham; then, cried herself to sleep!

Unbounded was the indignation of Lucy’s admirers, when the

sanctimonious Ezekiel was announced as the expectant bridegroom.

Harry Graham took the first steamer for Europe, railing at “woman’s

fickleness.” (Consistent Harry! when never a word of love had passed

his moustached lip.)

Shall I tell you how Ezekiel was transformed into the most ridiculous

of lovers? how his self-conceit translated Lucy’s indifference into

maiden coyness? how he looked often in the glass and thought he was

not so _very_ old after all? how he advised Lucy to tuck away all her

bright curls, because they “looked so childish?” how he named to her

papa an “early marriage day,”--not that he felt nervous about losing

his prize--oh, no (?)--but because “the society’s business required

his undivided attention.”

Well; Lucy, in obedience to her father’s orders, stood up in her

snow-white robe, and vowed “to love and cherish” a man just her

father’s age, with whom she had not the slightest congeniality of taste

or feeling. But papa had said it was an excellent match, and Lucy

never gainsayed papa; still, her long lashes drooped heavily over her

blue eyes, and her hand trembled, and her cheek grew deathly pale, as

Ezekiel handed her to the carriage that whirled them rapidly away.

Shall I tell you how long months and years dragged wearily on? how

Lucy saw through her husband’s mask of hypocrisy and self-conceit?

how to indifference succeeded disgust? how Harry Graham returned from

Europe, with a fair young English bride? how Lucy grew nervous and

hysterical? how Ezekiel soon wearied of his sick wife, and left her in

one of those _tombs_ for the wretched, an insane hospital? and how she

wasted, day by day--then _died_, with only a hired nurse to close those

weary blue eyes?

In a quiet corner of the old churchyard where Lucy sleeps, a

silver-haired old man, each night at dew-fall, paces to and fro, with

remorseless tread, as if by that weary vigil he would fain atone to the

unconscious sleeper, for turning her sweet young life to bitterness.

FRANCES SARGEANT OSGOOD.

“I’m passing through the eternal gates,

Ere June’s sweet roses blow.”

So sang the dying poetess. The “eternal gates” have closed upon

her. Those dark, soul-lit eyes beam upon us no more. “June” has come

again, with its “sweet roses,” its birds, its zephyrs, its flowers and

fragrance. It is such a day as her passionate heart would have reveled

in--a day of Eden-like freshness and beauty. I will gather some fair,

sweet flowers, and visit her grave.

“Show me Mrs. Fanny Osgood’s monument, please,” said I to the rough

gardener, who was spading the turf in Mount Auburn.

“In Orange Avenue, Ma’am,” he replied, respectfully indicating, with

a wave of the hand, the path I was to pursue.

Tears started to my eyes, as I trod reverently down the quiet path.

The little birds she loved so well, were skimming confidingly and

joyously along before me, and singing as merrily as if my heart echoed

back their gleeful songs.

I approached the enclosure, as the gardener had directed me. There

were five graves. _In which_ slept the poetess? for there was _not even

a headstone_! The flush of indignant feeling mounted to my temples;

the warm tears started from my eyes. _She was forgotten!_ Sweet, gifted

Fanny! _in her own family burial place she was forgotten!_ The stranger

from a distance, who had worshiped her genius, might in vain make a

pilgrimage to do her honor. I, who had personally known and loved her,

had not even the poor consolation of decking the bosom of her grave

with the flowers I had gathered; I could not kiss the turf beneath

which she is reposing; I could not drop a tear on the sod, ’neath which

her remains are mouldering back to their native dust. I could not tell,

(though I so longed to know,) in which of the little graves--for there

were several--slept her “dear May,” her “pure Ellen;” the little,

timid, household doves, who folded their weary wings when the parent

bird was stricken down, by the aim of the unerring Archer.

Though allied by no tie of blood to the gifted creature, who,

_somewhere_, lay sleeping there, I felt the flush of shame mount to

my temples, to turn away and leave her dust so unhonored. Oh, God! to

be so soon forgotten by all the world!--How can even _earth_ look so

glad, when such a warm, passionate heart lies cold and pulseless? Poor,

gifted, forgotten Fanny! She “still lives” in _my_ heart; and, Reader,

glance your eye over these touching lines, “written during her last

illness,” and tell me, Shall she not also live in thine?

* * * * *

A MOTHER’S PRAYER IN ILLNESS.

BY MRS. OSGOOD.

Yes! take them first, my Father! Let my doves

Fold their white wings in Heaven safe on thy breast,

Ere I am called away! I dare not leave

Their young hearts here, their innocent, thoughtless hearts!

Ah! how the shadowy train of future ills

Comes sweeping down life’s vista, as I gaze?

My May! my careless, ardent-tempered May;

My frank and frolic child! in whose blue eyes

Wild joy and passionate woe alternate rise;

Whose cheek, the morning in her soul illumes;

Whose little, loving heart, a word, a glance,

Can sway to grief or glee; who leaves her play,

And puts up her sweet mouth and dimpled arms

Each moment, for a kiss, and softly asks,

With her clear, flute-like voice, “Do you love me?”

Ah! _let_ me stay! ah! let me still be by,

To answer her, and meet her warm caress!

For, I away, how oft, in this rough world,

That earnest question will be asked in vain!

How oft that eager, passionate, petted heart

Will shrink abashed and chilled, to learn, at length,

The hateful, withering lesson of distrust!

Ah! let her nestle still upon this breast,

In which each shade that dims her darling face

Is felt and answered, as the lake reflects

The clouds that cross yon smiling Heaven.

And thou,

My modest Ellen! tender, thoughtful, true,

Thy soul attuned to all sweet harmonies;

My pure, proud, noble Ellen! with thy gifts

Of genius, grace and loveliness half-hidden

’Neath the soft vail of innate modesty:

How will the world’s wild discord reach thy heart,

To startle and appal! Thy generous scorn

Of all things base and mean--thy quick, keen taste,

Dainty and delicate--thy instinctive fear

Of those unworthy of a soul so pure,

Thy rare, unchildlike dignity of mien,

All--they will all bring pain to thee, my child.

And oh! if ever their grace and goodness meet

Cold looks and careless greetings, how will all

The latent evil yet undisciplined

In their young, timid souls forgiveness find?

Forgiveness and forbearance, and soft chidings,

Which I, their mother, learn’d of love, to give.

Ah! let me stay! albeit my heart is weary,

Weary and worn, _tired of its own sad beat_,

_That finds no echo in this busy world_

_Which cannot pause to answer_--tired, alike,

Of joy and sorrow--of the day and night!

Ah! _take them_ FIRST, _my Father! and then me_;

And for their sakes--for their sweet sakes, my Father!

Let me find rest beside them, at thy feet.

BEST THINGS.

I have a horror of “best” things, come they in the shape of shoes,

garments, bonnets or rooms. In such a harness my soul peers restlessly

out, asking “if I be I.” I’m puzzled to find myself. I become stiff and

formal and artificial as my surroundings.

But of all the best things, spare me the infliction of a “best room.”

Out upon a carpet too fine to tread upon, books too dainty to handle,

sofas that but mock your weary limbs, and curtains that dare not face a

ray of sunlight!

Had I a house, there should be no “best room” in it. No upholsterer

should exorcise comfort, or children, from my door-sill. The free,

fresh air should be welcome to play through it; the bright, glad

sunshine to lighten and warm it; while fresh mantel-flowers should woo

us visits from humming-bird and drowsy bee.

For pictures, I’d look from out my windows, upon a landscape painted

by the Great Master--ever fresh, ever varied, and never marred by

envious “cross lights;” now, wreathed in morning’s silvery mist; now,

basking in noon’s broad beam; now, flushed with sunset’s golden glow;

now, sleeping in dreamy moonlight.

For statuary, fill my house with children--rosy, dimpled, laughing

children; now, tossing their sunny ringlets from open brows; now,

vailing their merry eyes in slumberous dreams, ’neath snow-white lids;

now, sweetly grave, on bended knee, with clasped hands, and lisped

words of holy prayer.

Did I say I’d have nothing “_best_?” Pardon me. Sunday should be

the best day of all the seven--not ushered in with ascetic form, or

lengthened face, or stiff and rigid manners. Sweetly upon the still

Sabbath air should float the matin hymn of happy childhood; blending

with early song of birds, and wafted upward, with flowers’ incense,

to Him whose very name is LOVE. It should be no day for puzzling the

half-developed brain of childhood with gloomy creeds, to shake the

simple faith that prompts the innocent lips to say, “Our Father.” It

should be no day to sit upright on stiff-backed chairs, till the golden

sun should set. No; the birds should not be more welcome to warble, the

flowers to drink in the air and sunlight, or the trees to toss their

lithe limbs, free and fetterless.

“I’m _so sorry_ that to-morrow is Sunday!” From whence does this sad

lament issue? From under _your_ roof, oh mistaken but well-meaning

Christian parents--from the lips of _your_ child, whom you compel to

listen to two or three unintelligible sermons, sandwiched between

Sunday schools, and finished off at nightfall by tedious repetitions of

creeds and catechisms, till sleep releases your weary victim! No wonder

your child _shudders_, when the minister tells him that “Heaven is one

eternal Sabbath.”

Oh, mistaken parent! relax the over-strained bow--_prevent the

fearful rebound_, and make the Sabbath what God designed it, not a

weariness, but the “_best_” and happiest day of all the seven.

THE VESTRY MEETING.

The clock had just struck seven. The sharp-nosed old sexton of the

Steeple-Street Church had arranged the lights to his mind, determined

the proper latitude and longitude of Bibles and hymn-books, peeped

curiously into the little black stove in the corner, and was now

admonishing every person who passed in, of the propriety of depositing

the “free soil” on his boots upon the entry door-mat.

In they crept, one after another--pale-faced seamstresses, glad of

a reprieve; servant girls, who had turned their backs upon unwashed

dishes; mothers, whose “crying babies” were astounding the neighbors;

old maids, who had nowhere to spend their long evenings; widowers, who

felt an especial solicitude lest any of the sisters should be left to

return home unprotected; girls and boys, who came because they were

bid, and who had no very clear idea of the performances; and last,

though not least, Ma’am Spy, who thought it her duty to see that none

of the church-members were missing, and to inquire every Tuesday night,

of her friend Miss Prim, if she didn’t consider Mrs. Violet a proper

subject for church discipline, because she always had money enough to

pay her board bills, although her husband had deserted her.

Then there were the four Misses Nipper, who crawled in as if the

vestry floor were paved with live kittens, and who had never been

known, for four years, to vary one minute in their attendance, or to

keep awake from the first prayer to the doxology.

Then, there was Mrs. John Emmons, who sang the loudest, and prayed

the longest, and wore the most expensive bonnets, of any female member

in the church--whose name was on every committee, who instituted

the _select praying circle_ for the more _aristocratic_ portion of

the parish, and whose pertinacious determination to sit next to her

husband at the Tuesday night meeting, was regarded by the uninitiated

as a beautiful proof of conjugal devotion; but which, after patient

investigation, (between you and me, dear reader,) was found to be for

the purpose of arresting his coat-flaps when he popped up to make

mental shipwreck of himself by making a speech.

Then, there was Mr. Nobbs, whose remarks were a re-hash of the

different religious periodicals of the day, diversified with misapplied

texts of Scripture, and delivered with an intonation and gesticulation

that would have given Demosthenes fits.

Then, there was Zebedee Falstaff, who accomplished more for the

amelioration of the human race (according to his own account) than any

man of his aldermanic proportions in the nation, and who delivered (on

a hearty supper) a sleepy exhortation on the duties of self-denial and

charity, much to the edification of one of his needy relatives, to

whose tearful story he had that very day turned a deaf ear.

Then, there was Brother Higgins, who was always “just going” to

make a speech, “if brother Thomas hadn’t so exactly anticipated his

sentiments a minute before.”

Then, there was Mr. Addison Theophilus Shakspeare Milton, full of

poetical and religious inspiration, who soared so high in the realms of

fancy, that his hearers lost sight of him.

Then, there was little Dr. Pillbox, who gave us every proof in his

weekly exhortations of his knowledge of “drugs,” not to mention young

Smith, who chased an idea round till he lost it, and then took shelter

behind a bronchial difficulty which compelled him, “unwillingly (?) to

come to a close.”

Then, there were some sincere, good-hearted Christians--respectable

citizens--worthy heads of families; but whose lips had never been

“touched with a live coal from off the altar.”

Where was the pastor? Oh, he was there--a slight, fragile,

scholar-like looking man, with a fine intellectual face, exquisitely

refined tastes and sensibilities, and the meek spirit of “the Master.”

Had those slender shoulders no cross to bear? When chance sent some

fastidious worldling through that vestry door, did it cost him nothing

to watch the smile of contempt curl the stranger’s lip, as some

uneducated, but well-meaning layman, presented with stammering tongue,

in ungrammatical phrase, distorted, one-sided, bigoted views of great

truths which _his_ eloquent tongue might have made as clear as the

noon-day, and as cheering and welcome as heaven’s own blessed light, to

the yearning, dissatisfied spirit? Oh, is there _nothing_ in religion,

when it can so subdue the pride of intellect as to enable its professor

to disregard the stammering tongue, and sit meekly at the feet of the

ignorant disciple because he _is_ a disciple?

A BROADWAY SHOP REVERIE.

Forty dollars for a pocket-handkerchief! My dear woman! you need

a straight-jacket, even though you may be the fortunate owner of a

dropsical purse.

I won’t allude to the legitimate use of a pocket-handkerchief; I

won’t speak of the sad hearts _that_ “forty dollars,” in the hands of

some philanthropist, might lighten; I won’t speak of the “crows’ feet”

that will be penciled on your fair face, when your laundress carelessly

sticks the point of her remorseless smoothing iron through the flimsy

fabric, or the constant espionage you must keep over your treasure,

in omnibuses, or when promenading; but I _will_ ask you how many of

the lords of creation, for whose especial benefit you array yourself,

will know whether that cobweb rag fluttering in your hand cost forty

dollars, or forty cents?

Pout if you like, and toss your head, and say that you “don’t dress

to please the gentlemen.” I don’t hesitate to tell you (at this

distance from your finger nails) that is a downright----mistake! and

that the enormous sums most women expend for articles, the cost of

which few, save shop-keepers and butterfly feminines, know, is both

astounding and ridiculous.

True, you have the sublime gratification of flourishing your

forty-dollar handkerchief of sporting your twenty-dollar “Honiton

collar,” or of flaunting your thousand-dollar shawl, before the envious

and admiring eyes of some weak sister, who has made the possible

possession of the article in question a profound and lifetime study;

you may pass, too, along the crowded _pavé_, laboring under the

hallucination, that every passer-by appreciates your dry-goods value.

_Not a bit of it!_ Yonder is a group of gentlemen. You pass them

in your promenade; they glance carelessly at your _tout-ensemble_,

but their eyes rest admiringly on a figure close behind you. It

will chagrin you to learn that this locomotive loadstone has on

a seventy-five cent hat, of simple straw--a dress of lawn, one

shilling per yard--a twenty-five cent collar, and a shawl of the most

unpretending price and fabric.

All these items you take in at a glance, as you turn upon her your

aristocratic eye of feminine criticism to extract, if possible, the

talismanic secret of her magnetism. What is it? Let me tell you.

Nature, willful dame, has an aristocracy of her own, and in one of her

independent freaks has so daintily fashioned your rival’s limbs, that

the meanest garb could not _mar_ a grace, nor the costliest fabric

_add_ one. Compassionating her slender purse, nature has also added

an artistic eye, which accepts or rejects fabrics and colors with

unerring taste; hence her apparel is always well chosen and harmonious,

producing the _effect_ of a rich toilet at the cost of “a mere song;”

and as she sweeps majestically past, one understands why Dr. Johnson

pronounced a woman to be “perfectly dressed when one could never

remember what she wore.”

Now, I grant you, it is very provoking to be eclipsed by a star

_without a name_--moving out of the sphere of “upper-ten”-dom--a

woman who never wore a “camel’s hair shawl,” or owned a diamond in

her life; after the expense you have incurred, too, and the fees you

have paid to Madame Pompadour and Stewart for the first choice of

their Parisian fooleries. It is harrowing to the sensibilities. I

appreciate the awkwardness of your position; still, my compassion jogs

my invention vainly for a remedy--unless, indeed, you consent to crush

such democratic presumption, by _labelling_ the astounding price of the

dry-goods upon your aristocratic back.

“THE OLD WOMAN.”

Look into yonder window! What do you see? Nothing _new_, surely;

nothing but what the angels have looked smilingly down upon since the

morning stars first sang together; nothing but a loving mother hushing

upon her faithful breast a wailing babe, whose little life hangs by a

slender thread. Mortal lips have said, “The boy must die!”

A mother’s _hope_ never dies. She clasps him closer to her breast,

and gazes upward;--food and sleep and rest are forgotten, so that

that little flickering taper die not out. Gently upon her soft, warm

breast she wooes for it baby slumbers; long, weary nights, up and down

the cottage floor she paces, soothing its restless moaning. Suns rise

and set--stars pale--seasons come and go;--she heeds them not, so

that those languid eyes but beam brightness. Down the meadow--by the

brook--on the hill-side--she seeks with him the health-restoring breeze.

God be praised!--health comes at last! What joy to see the rosy flush

mantle on the pallid cheek!--what joy to see the shrunken limbs grow

round with health!--what joy to see the damp, thin locks grow crisp and

glossy!

What matter though the knitting lie neglected, or the spinning-wheel

be dumb, so that the soaring kite or bouncing ball but please his

boyish fancy, and prompt the gleeful shout? What matter that the

coarser fare be _hers_, so that the daintier morsel pass _his_ rosy

lip? What matter that _her_ robe be threadbare, so that _his_ graceful

limbs be clad in Joseph’s rainbow coat? What matter that _her_ couch

be hard, so that _his_ sunny head rest nightly on a downy pillow? What

matter that _her_ slender purse be empty, so that _his_ childish heart

may never know denial?

* * * * *

Years roll on. That loving mother’s eye grows dim; her glossy locks

are silvered; her limbs are sharp and shrunken; her footsteps slow and

tottering. And the boy?--the cherished Joseph?--he of the bold, bright

eye, and sinewy limb, and bounding step? Surely, from his kind hand

shall flowers be strewn on the dim, downward path to the dark valley;

surely will her son’s strong arm be hers to lean on; his voice of music

sweeter to her dull ear than seraphs’ singing.

No, no!--the hum of busy life has struck upon his ear, drowning the

voice of love. He has become a MAN! refined, fastidious!--and to his

forgetful, unfilial heart, (God forgive him,) the mother who bore him

is only--“_the old woman!_”

SUNDAY MORNING AT THE DIBDINS.

“Jane,” (suddenly exclaims Mrs. Dibdin,) “do you know it is nearly

time for your Sabbath School to commence? I hope you have committed

your hymns and commandments to memory. Put on your little jet bracelet,

and your ruffled pantalettes. Now, say the third commandment, while I

fix your curls. It does seem to me as if your hair never curls half as

well on Sundays as on week days. Mind, you ask Letty Brown where her

mother bought that cunning little straw hat of hers,--not in Sabbath

School, of course--that would be very wicked--but after it is over, as

you walk along to church.

“Jane, what’s the chief end of man? Don’t know? Well, it’s the most

astonishing thing that that Assembly’s Catechism don’t stay in your

head any better! It seems to go into one ear and out of the other. Now

pay particular attention while I tell you what the chief end of man is.

The chief end of man is--is--well--I--why don’t you hold still?--you

are always putting a body out! You had better run up stairs and get

your book. Here, stop a minute, and let me tie your sash straight.

Pink is very becoming to you, Jane; you inherit your mother’s blonde

beauty. Come away from that glass, Jane, this minute; don’t you know

it is wicked to look in the glass on Sunday? See if you can say your

‘creed’ that your Episcopal teacher wants you to learn. Come; ‘I

believe’--(In less than one week your toes will be through those drab

gaiters, Jane.) Goodness, if there isn’t the bell! Why didn’t you get

your lesson Saturday evening? Oh! I recollect; you were at dancing

school. Well--you needn’t say anything about that to your teacher;

because--because there’s ‘a time to dance,’ and a time to go to

meeting, and _now_ it is meeting time; so, come here, and let me roll

that refractory ringlet over my finger once more, and then, do you walk

_solemnly_ along to church, as a baptised child should.

“Here! stop a bit!--you may wear this coral bracelet of mine, if you

won’t lose it. There; now you look _most_ as pretty as your mother

did, when she was your age. Don’t toss your head so, Jane; people will

call you vain; and you know I have always told you that it makes very

little difference how a little girl _looks_, if she is only a little

Christian. There, good-bye;--repeat your catechism, going along; and

don’t let the wind blow your hair out of curl.”

SUNDAY NOON AT THE DIBDINS.

(_Mr. Dibdin reading a pile of business letters, fresh from the

post-office; Mrs. Dibdin, in a pearl-colored brocade and lace

ruffles, devouring “Bleak House.”_)

_Mrs. Dibdin._--“Jane, is it possible I see you on the holy Sabbath

day, with Mother Goose’s Melodies? Put it away, this minute, and get

your Bible. There’s the pretty story of Joseph building the ark, and

Noah in the lion’s den, and Isaac killing his brother Cain, and all

that.”

_Jane._--“Well, but, mamma, you know I can’t spell the big words.

Won’t you read it to me?”

_Mrs. Dibdin._--“I am busy reading now, my dear; go and ask your

papa.”

_Jane._--“Please, papa, will you read to me in my little Bible? mamma

is busy.”

_Mr. Dibdin._--“My dear, will you be kind enough to pull that bell

for Jane’s nursery maid?--she is getting troublesome.”

* * * * *

Exit Miss Jane to the nursery, to listen to Katy’s and her friend

Bridget’s account of their successful flirtations with John O’Calligan

and Michael O’Donahue.

ITEMS OF TRAVEL.

“All the world and his wife” are travelling; and a nice day it is to

commence a journey. How neat and tasteful those ladies look in their

drab travelling dresses; how self-satisfied their cavaliers, freshly

shaved and shampooed, in their brown linen over-alls. What apoplectic

looking carpet-bags; full of newspapers, and oranges, and bon-bons,

and novels, and night-caps! Saratoga, Newport, Niagara, White Hills,

Mammoth Cave--of these, the ladies chatter.

Well, here come the cars. Band-boxes, trunks, baskets, and bundles

are counted, and checks taken; a grave discussion is solemnly held,

as to which side of the cars the sun shines on; seats are chosen with

due deliberation, and the locomotive does its own “puffing” to the

bystanders, and darts off.

It is noon! How intense the heat; how annoying the dust; how crowded

the cars; how incessant the cries of that poor tired baby! The ladies’

bonnets are getting awry, their foreheads flushed, and their smooth

tresses unbecomingly _frowsed_, (see Fern Dictionary.) Now their little

chattering tongues have a reprieve, for Slumber has laid her leaden

finger on each drooping eyelid: even Alexander Smith’s new poem has

slidden from between taper fingers. Dream not lovingly of the author,

fair sleeper: poets and butterflies lose their brilliancy when caught.

How intensely ugly men look asleep! doubled up like so many

jack-knives--sorry looking “blades”--with their mouths wide open, and

their limbs twisted into all sorts of Protean shapes. Stay; there’s one

in yonder corner who is an exception. That man knows it is becoming to

him to go to sleep. He has laid his head against the window and taken

off his hat, that the wind might lift those black curls from his broad

white brow;--he knows that his eye-lashes are long and dark, and that

his finely chiselled lips need no defect-concealing moustache;--he

knows that he can afford to turn towards us his fine profile, with its

classical outline;--he knows that his cravat is well tied, and that the

hand upon which he supports his cheek is both well-formed and daintily

white. Wonder if he knows anything else?

We halt suddenly. “Back! back!” says the conductor. The sleepers

start to their feet; the old maid in the corner gives a little

hysterical shriek; brakemen, conductor, and engineer jump off, push

back their hats, and gaze nervously down the road. “What’s the matter?”

echo scores of anxious voices. “What’s the matter?” Oh, nothing; only

a mother made childless: only a little form--five minutes ago bounding

with happy life--lying a mangled corpse upon the track. The engineer

says, with an oath, that “the child was a fool not to get out of the

way,” and sends one of the hands back to pick up the dismembered limbs

and carry them to its mother, who forbade even the winds of heaven to

blow too roughly on her boy; then he gives the “iron horse” a fresh

impetus, and we dash on; imagination paints a scene in yonder house

which many a frantic parent will recognize; and from which (even in

thought) we turn shuddering away--while the weary mother in the corner

covers her fretful babe with kisses, and thanks God, through her tears,

that her loving arms are still its sheltering fold.

NEWSPAPER-DOM.

It is beyond my comprehension how Methusaleh lived nine hundred

and sixty-nine years without a newspaper; or, what the mischief Noah

did, during that “forty days” shower, when he had exhausted the

study of Natural History. It makes me yawn to think of it. Or what

later generations did, the famished half-hour before meals; or, when

traveling, when the old stage-coach crept up a steep hill, some dusty

hot summer noon. Shade of Franklin! how they must have been _ennuyéd_!

How did they ever know when flour had “riz”--or what was the market

price of pork, small tooth combs, cotton, wool, and molasses? How did

they know whether Queen Victoria had “made her brother an uncle or

an aunt?” What christianized gouty old men and snappish old ladies?

What kept the old maids from making mince-meat of pretty young girls?

What did love-sick damsels do for “sweet bits of poetry” and “touching

continued stories?” Where did their papas find a solace when the

coffee was muddy, the toast smoked, and the beef-steak raw, or done to

leather? What did cab-drivers do, while waiting for a tardy patron?

What did draymen do, when there was “a great calm” at the dry-goods

store of Go Ahead & Co.? What screen did husbands dodge behind, when

their wives asked them for money?

Some people define happiness to be one thing, and some another. I

define it to be a room “carpeted and furnished” with “exchanges,” with

a place cleared in the middle for two arm-chairs--one for a clever

editor, and one for yourself. I say it is to take up those papers, one

by one, and laugh over the funny things and skip the stupid ones,--to

admire the ingenuity of would-be literary lights, who pilfer one half

their original (?) ideas, and steal the remainder. I say it is to

shudder a thanksgiving that you are not in the marriage list, and to

try, for the hundredth time, to solve the riddle: how can each paper

that passes through your hands be “the best and cheapest periodical in

the known world?”

I say it is to look round an editorial sanctum, inwardly chuckling

at the forlorn appearance it makes without feminine fingers to keep

it tidy: to see the looking-glass veiled with cobwebs; the dust on

the desk thick enough to write your name in; the wash-bowl and towel

mulatto color; the soap liquified to a jelly, (editors like soft

soap!); the table covered with a heterogeneous mass of manuscripts,

and paper folders, and wafers, and stamps, and blotting-paper, and

envelopes, and tailors’ bills, and letters complimentary, belligerent

and pacific.

I say it is to hear the editor complain, with a frown, of the

heat and his headache; to conceal a smile, while you suggest the

_probability_ of relief if a window should be opened; to see him start

at your superior profundity; to hear him say, with a groan, how much

“proof” he has to read, before he can leave for home; to take off your

gloves and help him correct it;--to hear him say, there is a book for

review, which he has not time to look over; to take a folder and cut

the leaves, and affix guide-boards for notice at all the fine passages;

to see him kick over an innocent chair, because he cannot get hold of

the right word for an editorial; to feel (while you help him to it)

very much like the mouse who gnawed the lion out of the net, and then

to take up his paper some days after, and find a paragraph endorsed by

him, “deploring the intellectual inferiority of women.”

That’s what I call happiness!

HAVE WE ANY MEN AMONG US?

Walking along the street the other day, my eye fell upon this

placard,--

[Illustration: MEN WANTED.]

Well; they have been “wanted” for some time; but the article is

not in the market, although there are plenty of spurious imitations.

Time was, when a lady could decline writing for a newspaper without

subjecting herself to paragraphic attacks from the editor, invading

the sanctity of her private life. Time was, when she could decline

writing without the editor’s revenging himself, by asserting falsely

that “he had often refused her offered contributions?” Time was, when

if an editor heard a vague rumor affecting a lady’s reputation, he

did not endorse it by republication, and then meanly screen himself

from responsibility by adding, “we presume, however, that this is only

an _on dit_!” Time was, when a lady could be a successful authoress,

without being obliged to give an account to the dear public of the

manner in which she appropriated the proceeds of her honest labors.

Time was, when whiskered braggadocios in railroad cars and steamboats

did not assert, (in blissful ignorance that they were looking the lady

authoress straight in the face!) that they were “on the most intimate

terms of friendship with her!” Time was, when _milk-and-water husbands

and relatives_ did not force a defamed woman to unsex herself in the

manner stated in the following paragraph:

“MAN SHOT BY A YOUNG WOMAN.--One day last week, a young lady of

good character, daughter of Col. ----, having been calumniated

by a young man, called upon him, armed with a revolver. The

slanderer could not, or did not deny his allegations; whereupon

she fired, inflicting a dangerous if not a fatal wound in his

throat.”

Yes; it is very true that there are “MEN wanted.” Wonder how many

1854 will furnish?

HOW TO CURE THE BLUES.

And so you have “the blues,” hey! Well, I pity you! No I don’t

either; there’s no need of it. If one friend proves a Judas, never

mind! plenty of warm, generous, nice hearts left for the winning. If

you are poor, and have to sell your free agency for a sixpence a week

to some penurious relative, or be everlastingly thankful for the gift

of an old garment that won’t hang together till you get it home! go to

work like ten thousand evil spirits, and make yourself _independent!_

and see with what a different pair of spectacles you’ll get looked at!

Nothing like it! You can have everything on earth you want, when you

don’t _need_ anything.

Don’t the Bible say, “To him that hath shall be given?” No mistake,

you see. When the wheel turns round with you on the top, (saints and

angels!) you can do anything you like--play any sort of a prank--pout

or smile, be grave or gay, saucy or courteous, it will pass muster!

You never need trouble yourself,--can’t do anything wrong if you try.

At the most, it will only be an “eccentricity!” But you never need be

such a fool as to expect that anybody will find out you are a _diamond_

till you get a _showy setting_! You’ll get knocked and cuffed around,

and roughly handled, with paste and tinsel, and rubbish, till that

auspicious moment arrives. Then! won’t all the sheaves bow down to your

sheaf?--not one rebellious straggler left in the field! But stay a

little.

In your adversity, found you one faithful heart that stood firmly by

your side and shared your tears, when skies were dark, and your pathway

thorny and steep, and summer friends fell off like autumn leaves? By

all that’s noble in a woman’s heart, give that one the first place in

it now. Let the world see _one_ heart proof against the sunshine of

prosperity. You can’t repay such a friend--all the mines of Golconda

couldn’t do it. But in a thousand delicate ways, prompted by a woman’s

unerring tact, let your heart come forth gratefully, generously,

lovingly. Pray heaven he be on the shady side of fortune--that your

heart and hand may have a wider field for gratitude to show itself.

Extract every thorn from his pathway, chase away every cloud of sorrow,

brighten his lonely hours, smooth the pillow of sickness, and press

lovingly his hand in death.

RAIN IN THE CITY.

Patter, patter, patter! down comes the city shower, on dusty and

heated pavements; gleefully the willow trees shake out their long green

tresses, and make their toilettes in the little mirror pools beneath.

The little child runs out, with outspread palm, to catch the cool and

pearly drops. The weary laborer, drawing a long, grateful breath,

bares the flushed brow of toil; boyhood, with bare and adventurous

foot, wades through gutter rivers, forgetful of birch, and bread and

butter. Ladies skutter tiptoe, with uplifted skirts, to the shelter of

some friendly omnibus; gentlemen, in the independent consciousness of

corduroys, take their time and umbrellas, while the poor jaded horses

shake their sleek sides, but do not say _neigh_ to their impromptu

shower-bath.

The little sparrows twitter their thanks from the dripping eaves,

circling the piazza, then laving their speckled breasts at the little

lakelets in the spout. Old Towser lies with his nose to the door-mat,

sniffing “the cool,” with the philosophy of Diogenes. Petrarch sits

in the parlor with his Laura, too happy when some vivid lightning

flash gives him an excuse for closer quarters. Grandpapa puts on his

spectacles, walks to the window, and taking a look at the surrounding

clouds, says, “How this rain will make the corn grow.” The old maid

opposite sets out a single geranium, scraggy as herself, invoking some

double blossoms. Forlorn experimenter! even a spinster’s affections

must centre somewhere.

See that little pinafore mariner stealing out, with one eye on the

nursery window, to navigate his pasteboard boat in the street pools.

There’s a flash of sunshine! What a glorious rainbow! The little fellow

tosses his arms aloft, and gazes at it. Ten to one, the little Yankee,

instead of admiring its gorgeous splendor, is wishing he could invert

it for a swing, and seizing it at both ends, sweep through the stars

with it. Well, it is nothing new for a child to like “the _milky way_.”

Fair weather again! piles of heavy clouds are drifting by, leaving

the clear blue sky as serene as when “the morning stars first sang

together.” Nature’s gems sparkle lavishly on glossy leaf and swaying

branch, on bursting bud and flower; while the bow of peace melts gently

and imperceptibly away, like the dying saint into the light of Heaven.

Oh, earth _is_ gloriously fair! Alas! that the trail of the serpent

should be over it all!

MRS. WEASEL’S HUSBAND.

“A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree,

The more they are beaten the better they be.”

“Any man who believes that, had better step into my shoes,” said

little Mr. Weasel. “I suppose I’m what you call ‘the head of the

family,’ but I shouldn’t know it if somebody didn’t tell me of it.

Heigho! who’d have thought it five and twenty years ago? Didn’t I

stifle a tremendous strong penchant for Diana Dix, (never smoked, I

remember, for four hours after it,) because I had my private suspicions

she’d hold the reins in spite of my teeth, and so I offered myself to

little Susey Snow, (mistake in her name, by the way.) You might have

spanned her round the waist, or lifted her with one hand. She never

looked anybody in the face when they spoke to her, and her voice was

as soft as----my brains! I declare, it’s unaccountable how deceitful

female nature is! Never was so taken in in my life; she’s a regular

Vesuvius crater! Her will? (don’t mention it!) Try to pry up the Alps

with a cambric needle! If she’d only fly into a passion, I think I

could venture to pluck up a little spirit; but that cool, determined,

never-say-die look would turn Cayenne pepper to oil. It wilts _me_

right down, like a cabbage leaf. I’d as lief face a loaded cannon! I

wish I could go out evenings; but she won’t let me. Tom Jones asked

me yesterday why I wasn’t at Faneuil Hall the night before. I told him

I had the bronchitis. He saw through it! Sent me a pair of reins the

next day,--‘said to be a certain cure!’ Ah! it’s very well for _him_

to laugh, but it’s no joke to me. I suppose it’s time to feed that

baby; Mrs. Weasel will be home pretty soon, from the ‘Woman’s Rights

Convention.’ No, I won’t, either; I’ll give it some paregoric, and run

up garret and smoke one cigar. I feel as though I _couldn’t look a

humming-bird in the eye_! Nice cigar!--_very_ nice! What a fool I am

to be ordered round by a little blue-eyed woman, three feet high! I’m

a very good looking fellow, and I won’t stand it! Isn’t that little

Weasel as much her baby as it is mine? Certainly.”

“M-r. W-e-a-s-e-l!”

“Hem,--my--dear--(oh! that eye of hers!)--you see, my dear, (there, I

won’t do it again, Mrs. Weasel.) How’s ‘the Convention,’ dear? Carried

the day, I hope?--made one of your smart speeches, hey? ’Tisn’t every

man owns such a chain-lightning wife;--look out for your rights, dear;

(deuce knows _I_ dare not!”)

COUNTRY SUNDAY VS. CITY SUNDAY.

’Tis Sunday in the city.

The sun glares murkily down, through the smoky and stench-laden

atmosphere, upon the dirty pavements; newsboys, with clamorous cries,

are vending their wares; milkmen rattle over the pavements, and startle

drowsy sleepers by their shrill whoopings; housemaids are polishing

door knobs, washing sidewalks, and receiving suspicious looking baskets

and parcels from contiguous groceries and bakeshops.

The sun rolls on his course; purifying the air and benignly smiling

upon all the dwellers in the city, as though he would gently win them

from unholy purposes to heavenly meditations and pursuits.

--And now the streets are filled with a motley show of silks, satins,

velvets, feathers and jewels--while carriages and vehicles of every

description roll past, freighted with counter-freed youths and their

Dulcineas, bent upon a holiday. Hundreds of “drinking saloons” belch

forth their pestiferous breath, upon which is borne, to the ear of

the passer-by, (perhaps a lady or tender child,) the profane curse

and obscene gibe; and from their portals reel intoxicated brutes, who

once were men. Military companies march to and fro; now, at slow and

solemn pace, to the mournful strains of a dead-march; now, (having rid

themselves of the corpse of their dead comrade,) they gaily “step out,”

blithe and merry, to the cheering strains of an enlivening quickstep,

based on an Ethiopian melody; the frivolous tones blending discordantly

with the chimes of the Sabbath bells. And stable-keepers, oyster and

ice-cream venders, liquor sellers, _et id omne genus_, are reaping a

golden harvest, upon which the “Lord of the Sabbath” shall, sooner or

later, send “a blight and a mildew.”

* * * * *

’Tis Sunday in the country.

Serene and majestic, in the distance, lie the blue, cloud-capped

hills; while, at their base, the silver stream winds gracefully,

sparkling in the glad sunlight. Now the fragrant branches stir with

feathered life; and one clear, thrilling carol lifts the finger

from the dumb lip of Nature, heralding a full orchestra of untaught

choristers, which plume their wings, and soaring, seem to say, Praise

Him! praise Him!

Obedient to the sweet summons, the silver-haired old man and rosy

child, along grassy, winding paths, hie to the little village church.

On the gentle maiden’s kindly arm leans the bending form of “four

score years and ten,” gazing, with dimmed but grateful eye, on leafy

stem, and bursting bud, and full-blown flower; or, listening to the

wind dallying with the tall tree-tops, or kissing the fields of golden

grain, which wave their graceful recognition, as it sweeps by on its

fragrant path.

And now, slowly the Sabbath sun sinks beneath the western hills in

gold and purple glory. Gently the dew of peace descends on closed eyes

and flowers; while holy stars creep softly out, to keep their tireless

watch o’er happy hearts and Sabbath-loving homes.

SOBER HUSBANDS.

“If your husband looks grave, let him alone; don’t disturb or

annoy him.”

Oh, pshaw! were I married, the soberer my husband looked, the more

fun I’d rattle about his ears. _Don’t disturb him!_ I guess so! I’d

salt his coffee--and pepper his tea--and sugar his beef-steak--and

tread on his toes--and hide his newspaper--and sew up his pockets--and

put pins in his slippers--and dip his cigars in water,--and I wouldn’t

stop for the great Mogul, till I had shortened his long face to my

liking. Certainly, he’d “get vexed;” there wouldn’t be any fun in

teasing him if he didn’t; and that would give his melancholy blood a

good, healthful start; and his eyes would snap and sparkle, and he’d

say, “Fanny, WILL you be quiet or not?” and I should laugh, and pull

his whiskers, and say decidedly, “_Not!_” and then I should tell him he

hadn’t the slightest idea how handsome he looked when he was vexed, and

then he would pretend not to hear the compliment--but would pull up his

dickey, and take a sly peep in the glass (for all that!) and then he’d

begin to grow amiable, and get off his stilts, and be just as agreeable

all the rest of the evening _as if he wasn’t my husband_; and all

because I didn’t follow that stupid bit of advice “to let him alone.”

Just as if _I_ didn’t know! Just imagine ME, Fanny, sitting down on a

cricket in the corner, with my forefinger in my mouth, looking out the

sides of my eyes, and waiting till that man got ready to speak to me!

You can see at once it would be--be--. Well, the amount of it is, _I

shouldn’t do it!_

OUR STREET.

Sing away, little bird! only you, the trees, and myself, are

stirring, but you have an appreciative audience. Your sweet carol

and the graceful waving of yonder tree, as the soft wind turns up

its silver-lined leaves in the sunlight, fill my heart with a quiet

gladness.

Whom have we here? with ragged skirt, bare mud-begrimm’d feet and

ankles, tattered shawl, and tangled masses of hair fluttering round

a face ploughed deep with time and trouble. See--she stoops, and,

stretching her skeleton fingers towards the gutter, grasps some refuse

rags and paper, and thrusts them greedily into the dirty sack she bears

upon her shoulders. Good heavens! that dirty mass of rags a _woman_?

How wearily she leans against yonder tree, gazing upward into its

branches! Perhaps that little bird’s matin song has swept some chord

for long years untouched in that callous heart; telling her of the

shelter of a happy home, where Plenty sat at the board and Love kept

guard at the threshold. Oh! who can tell? One more song, my little

bird, ere she goes; not so _mockingly_ joyous, but sweet, and soft, and

low--a requiem for blighted youth and blasted hopes; for know that the

blue sky to whose arch you soar, bends over misery enough to make the

bright seraphs weep.

Bless me! what yell is that? “Yeei--ho--oe--yeei--ho.” It is only

a milkman, and that horrid cry simply means, “Milk for sale.” What a

picture of laziness is the vender! Jump off your cart, man, thump on

the kitchen door with your milk-dipper, and rouse that sleepy cook who

is keeping you waiting her pleasure; that’s the way to do business:

pshaw! your manliness must have been diluted with your milk. One by

one they emerge, the dead-and-alive looking housemaids, dragging their

brooms after them lazily and helplessly, and bandy words with the vexed

milkman, and gossip with each other, as they rest their chins on their

broom-handles, on “kitchen cabinet” affairs.

Here comes an Italian, balancing a shelf-load of plaster Cupids and

Venuses, and dove-circled vases. How mournfully his dark eyes look out

from beneath his tasseled cap, as he lifts his burden from his head

for a momentary reprieve. They tell of weary feet, a heavy heart, and

a light purse. They tell, with a silent reproach, that our hearts are

as cold as our clime. Oh! not _all_, good Pietro! For your sake, I’ll

make myself mistress of that sleeping child; though, truth to say, the

sculptor who moulded it has most wofully libelled Nature. Would I could

see the sunny skies upon which your dark eyes first opened, and all the

glorious forms that beauty wears in your vine-clad home beyond the seas.

How the pedestrians hurry along!--merchants to their cares and their

counting-rooms, and shop-girls and seamstresses to their prisons. Here

comes a group of pale-faced city children, on their way to school. God

bless the little unfortunates! Their little feet should be crushing

the strawberries, ripe and sweet, on some sunny hill-slope, where

breath of new-mown hay and clover blossoms would give roses to their

cheeks and strength and grace to their cramped and half-developed

limbs. Poor little creatures! they never saw a patch of blue sky bigger

than their satchels, or a blade of grass that dared to grow without

permission from the mayor, aldermen and common council. Poor little

skeletons! tricked out like the fashion-prints, and fed on diluted

skim-milk and big dictionaries. I pity you.

[Illustration: OUR STREET.]

A hand-organ! ground by a modern Peter Schemmel, and accompanied by a

woman whose periphery it would be vain to compute by inches, singing,

“I’d be a butterfly.”

Ye gods and graces! if ye heed her prayer, grant that she alight not

on my _two-lips_! Now she is warbling,

“Home! sweet home,”

as if she wasn’t making it for me, this minute, a perfect place of

torment! Avaunt! thou libel upon feminity!--creep into corduroys and

apply for the office of town crier.

A funeral! That is nothing uncommon in a densely populated city; so,

nobody turns to look, as it winds along, slowly, as will the sad future

to that young husband--that father of an hour. Sad legacy to him, those

piles of tiny robes, and dainty little garments, whose elaborate and

delicate embroidery was purchased at such a fearful price. Nature will

have her revenge for a reckless disregard of her laws: so, there she

lies, the young mother, with the long-looked-for babe upon her girlish

breast. Sad comment upon a foolish vanity.

What have we here?--A carriage at the door? Ah! I recollect; there

was a wedding at that house last night--lights flashing, music

swelling--white arms gleaming through tissue textures, and merry voices

breaking in upon my slumbers late in the small hours.

Ah yes--and this is the bride’s leave-taking. How proud and important

that young husband looks, as he stands on the steps, with the bride’s

traveling shawl upon his arm, giving his orders to the coachman! Now

he casts an impatient glance back through the open door into the hall,

half jealous of the tear sparkling in the young wife’s eye, as the

mother presses her tenderly to her breast, as the father lays the hand

of blessing on her sunny head, and brothers and sisters, half glad,

half sad, offer their lips for a good-bye kiss.

Hurry her not away! Not even the heart she has singled out from

all the world to lean upon, can love so fondly, so truly, as those

she leaves behind. Dark days may come, when love’s sunshine shall be

o’erclouded by cares and sickness, from which young manhood, impatient,

shrinks. _Let her linger_: so shall your faith in her young wifely love

be strengthened by such strong filial yearning for these, her cradle

watchers. Let her linger: silver hairs mingle in the mother’s tresses;

the father’s dark eye grows dim with age, and insatiate Death heeds nor

prayer, nor tear, nor lifted eye of supplication. Let her linger.

New-York! New-York! who but thyself would have tolerated for twelve

mortal hours, with the thermometer at 90 degrees, that barrel of refuse

fish and potatoes, sour bread and damaged meat, questionable vegetables

and antique puddings, steaming on that sunny sidewalk, in the forlorn

hope that some pig’s patron might be tempted, by the odoriferous hash,

to venture on its transportation. Know, then, O pestiferous Gotham,

that half a score of these gentry, after having sounded it with a long

pole to the bottom, for the benefit of my olfactories, have voted it a

nuisance to which even a pig might make a _gutter_-al remonstrance. Oh!

Marshal Tukey, if California yet holds you, in the name of the Asiatic

cholera, and _my_ “American constitution,” recross the Isthmus and

exorcise that barrel!

Look on yonder door-step. See that poor, worn creature seated there,

with a puling infant at her breast, from whence it draws no sustenance:

on either side are two little creatures, apparently asleep, with their

heads in her lap. Their faces are very pallid, and their little limbs

have nothing of childhood’s rounded symmetry and beauty. “Perhaps she

is an impostor,” says Prudence, seizing my purse-strings, “getting up

that tableau for just such impressible dupes as yourself.” “Perhaps she

is _not_,” says Feeling; “perhaps at this moment despair whispers in

her tempted ear ‘curse God and die!’ Oh! then, how sad to have ‘passed

her by, on the other side!’” Let _me_ be “duped,” rather than that wan

face should come between my soul and Heaven.

WHEN YOU ARE ANGRY.

“When you are angry, take three breaths before you speak.”

I couldn’t do it, said Mrs. Penlimmon. Long before that time I should

be as placid as an oyster. “Three breaths!” I could double Cape Horn

in that time. I’m telegraphic,--if I had to stop to reflect, I should

never be saucy. I can’t hold anger any more than an April sky can

retain showers; the first thing I know, the sun is shining. You may

laugh, but that’s better than one of your foggy dispositions, drizzling

drops of discomfort a month on a stretch; no computing whether you’ll

have anything but gray clouds overhead the rest of your life. No: a

good heavy clap of thunder for me--a lightning flash; then a bright

blue sky and a clear atmosphere, and I am ready for the first flower

that springs up in my path.

“Three breaths!” how absurd! as if people, when they get excited,

ever _have_ any breath, or if they have, are conscious of it. I should

like to see the Solomon who got off that sage maxim. I should like

better still to give him an opportunity to test his own theory! It’s

very refreshing to see how good people can be, when they have no

temptation to sin; how they can sit down and make a code of laws for

the world in general and sinners in particular.

“Three breaths!” I wouldn’t give a three-cent piece for anybody who

is that long about anything. The days of stage coaches have gone by.

Nothing passes muster now but comets, locomotives and telegraph wires.

Our forefathers and foremothers would have to hold the hair on their

heads if they should wake up in 1854. They’d be as crazy as a cat in a

shower-bath, at all our whizzing and rushing. Nice old snails! It’s a

question with me whether I should have crept on at their pace, had I

been a cotemporary. Christopher Columbus would have discovered the New

World much quicker than he did, had I been at his elbow.

LITTLE BESSIE;

OR, MISS PRIM’S MODEL SCHOOL.

School is out! What stretching of limbs; what unfettering of tongues

and heels; what tossing-up of pinafores and primers; what visions of

marbles, and hoops, and dolls, and apples, and candy, and gingerbread!

How welcome the fresh air; how bright the sunshine; how tempting the

grassy playground! Ah, there’s a drop of rain--there’s another; there’s

a thunder clap! “Just as school is out--how provoking!” echo a score

of voices; and the pouting little prisoners huddle together in the

school-house porch, and console themselves by swapping jack-knives and

humming tops, and telling marvellous stories of gypsies and giants;

while Miss Prim, the dyspeptic teacher, shakes her head and the ferule,

and declares that the former will “fly into fifty pieces;” upon which

some of the boys steal out of doors and amuse themselves by sounding

the puddles with their shoes, while others slyly whittle the desks, or

draw caricatures on their slates, of Miss Prim’s long nose.

Drip, drip--spatter, spatter! How the rain comes down, as if it

couldn’t help it; no prospect of “holding up.”

Here come messengers from anxious mothers, with India rubbers, extra

tippets, and umbrellas; and there’s a chaise at the door, for Squire

Lenox’s little rosy daughter; and a wagon for the two Prince girls; and

a stout Irish girl, with a blanket shawl, to carry home little lame

Minnie May, who is as fragile as a lily, and just as sweet. And there’s

a servant man for Master Simpkins, the fat dunce with the embroidered

jacket, whose father owns “the big Hotel, and wishes his son to have a

seat all by himself.”

And now they are all gone;--all save little Bessie Bell, the new

scholar,--a little four-year-older, who is doing penance over in the

corner for “a misdemeanor.”

Bessie’s mother is a widow. She has known such bright, sunny days,

in the shelter of a happy home, with a dear arm to lean upon! Now, her

sweet face is sad and care-worn, and when she speaks, her voice has a

heart-quiver in it: but, somehow, when she talks to you, you do not

notice that her dress is faded, or her bonnet shabby and rusty. You

instinctively touch your hat to her, and treat her very courteously, as

if she were a fine lady.

As I said before, this is little Bessie’s first day at school; for,

she is light and warmth and sunshine to her broken-hearted mother. But,

little Bessie must have bread to eat. A shop woman offered her mother a

small pittance to come and help her a part of every day; but she is not

to bring her child; so, Bessie must go to school, to be out of harm’s

way, and her mother tells Miss Prim, as she seats her on the hard

bench, that “she is very timid and tender-hearted;” and then she kisses

Bessie’s little quivering lip, and leaves her with a heavy heart.

Bessie dare not look up for a few minutes;--it is all very odd

and strange, and if she were not so frightened she would cry aloud.

By-and-by she gains a little courage, and peeps out from beneath her

drooping eye-lashes. Her little pinafore neighbor gives her a sweet

smile--it makes her little heart so happy, that she throws her little

dimpled arms about her neck and says, (out loud) “I love you!”

Poor, affectionate little Bessie! she didn’t know that that was

a “misdemeanor;” nor had she ever seen that bug-bear, a “School

Committe.” Miss Prim had;--and Miss Prim never wasted her lungs

talking; so, she leisurely untied her black silk apron from her virgin

waist, and proceeded to make an African of little Bessie, by pinning

it tightly over her face and head--an invention which herself and

“the Committe” considered the _ne plus ultra_ of discipline. Bessie

struggled, and said she “never would kiss anybody again--never--never;”

but Miss Prim was inexorable, and, as her victim continued to utter

smothered cries, Miss Prim told her “that she would keep her after the

other children had gone home.”

One class after another recited; Bessie’s sobs became less loud and

frequent, and Miss Prim flattered herself, now that they had ceased

altogether, that she was quite subdued, and congratulated herself

complacently upon her extraordinary talent for “breaking in new

beginners.”

And now, school being done, the children gone, her bonnet and India

rubbers being put on, and all her spinster “fixings” settled to her

mind, visions of hot tea and buttered toast began to float temptingly

through her brain, and suggest the propriety of Bessie’s release.

“Bessie!”--no answer. “Bessie!”--no reply. Miss Prim laid the ferule

across the little fat shoulders. Bessie didn’t wince. Miss Prim

unpinned the apron to confront the face that was bold enough to defy

her and “the Committee.” Little Bessie was _dead_!

Well; there was a pauper funeral, and a report about that a child had

been “frightened to death at school;” but Bessie’s mother was a poor

woman, consequently the righteous Committee “didn’t feel called upon to

interfere with such idle reports.”

THE DELIGHTS OF VISITING.

What is it to go away on a visit? Well, it is to take leave of the

little velvet rocking-chair, which adjusts itself so nicely to your

shoulders and spinal column; to cram, jam, squeeze, and otherwise

compress your personal effects into an infinitessimal compass; to

be shook, jolted, and tossed, by turns, in carriage, railroad and

steamboat; to be deafened with the stentorian lungs of cab-drivers,

draymen and porters; to clutch your baggage as if every face you saw

was a highwayman; (or to find yourself transported with rage, at

finding _it_ transported by steam to Greenland or Cape Horn.) It is

to reach your friend’s house, travel-stained, cold and weary, with

an unbecoming crook in your bonnet; to be utterly unable to get the

frost out of your tongue, or “_the beam into your eye_,” and to have

the felicity of hearing some strange guest remark to your friend, as

you say an early good-night, “Is it possible THAT is your friend, Miss

Grey?”

It is to be ushered into the “best chamber,” (always a _north_ one)

of a cold January night; to unhook your dress with stiffened digits; to

find every thing in your trunk _but_ your night-cap; to creep between

polished _linen_ sheets, on a congealed _mattress_, and listen to the

chattering of your own teeth until daylight.

It is to talk at a mark twelve hours on the stretch; to eat and

drink all sorts of things which disagree with you; to get up sham fits

of enthusiasm at trifles; to learn to yawn circumspectly behind your

finger-tips; to avoid all allusion to topics unsuited to your pro tem.

latitude; to have somebody forever at your nervous elbow, _trying to

make you_ “_enjoy yourself_;” to laugh when you want to cry; to be

loquacious when you had rather be taciturn; to have mind and body in

unyielding harness, for lingering, consecutive weeks; and then to

invite your friends, with a hypocritical smile, to play the same farce

over with you, “whenever business or pleasure calls them” to Frog town!

HELEN HAVEN’S “HAPPY NEW YEAR.”

“I’m miserable; there’s no denying it,” said Helen. “There’s nothing

in this endless fashionable routine of dressing, dancing and visiting,

that can satisfy me. Hearts enough are laid at my feet, but I owe

them all to the accidents of wealth and position. The world seems all

emptiness to me. There _must_ be something beyond this, else why this

ceaseless reaching of the soul for some unseen good? Why do the silent

voices of nature so thrill me? Why do the holy stars with their burning

eyes utter such silent reproaches? Have I nothing to do but amuse

myself with toys like a child? Shall I live only for _myself_? Does not

the sun that rises upon my luxury, shine also upon the tear-stained

face of sorrow? Are there not slender feet stumbling wearily in rugged,

lonely paths? Why is _mine_ flower-bestrewn? How am I better? Whose

sorrowful heart have I lightened? What word of comfort has fallen from

my lips on the ear of the grief-stricken? What am I here for? What is

my mission?”

* * * * *

“And you have only this wretched place to nurse that sick child in?”

said Helen; “and five lesser ones to care for? Will you trust that sick

child with me?”

“She is not long for this world, my lady; and I love her as well as

though I had but one. Sometimes I’ve thought the more care I have for

her, the closer my heart clings to her. She is very patient and sweet.”

“Yes, I know,” said Helen; “but I have it in my power to make her so

much more comfortable. It may preserve, at least lengthen her life.”

When little Mary opened her eyes the next morning, she half believed

herself in fairy-land. Soft fleecy curtains were looped about her head,

her little emaciated hand rested upon a silken coverlid, a gilded

table stood by her bed-side, the little cup from which her lips were

moistened was of bright silver, and a sweet face was bending over her,

shaded by a cloud of golden hair, that fell like a glory about her head.

“Where am I?” said the child, crossing her little hand across her

bewildered brain.

Helen smiled. “You are _my_ little bird now, dear. How do you like

your cage?”

“It is very, _very_ pretty,” said Mary, with childish delight; “but

won’t you get tired of waiting upon a poor little sick girl? Mamma was

used to it. _You_ don’t look as if you could work.”

“Don’t I?” said Helen, with a slight blush; “for all that, you’ll see

how nicely I can take care of you, little one. I’ll sing to you; I’ll

read to you; I’ll tell you pretty stories; and when you are weary of

your couch, I’ll fold you in my arms, and rock you so gently to sleep.

And when you get better and stronger, you shall have so many nice toys

to play with, and I’ll crown your little bright head with pretty

flowers, and make you nice little dresses; and now I’m going to read to

you. Betty has been out, and bought you a little fairy story about a

wonderful puss; and here’s ‘Little Timothy Pip;’ which will you have?”

“Mamma used to read to me out of the Bible,” said little Mary, as her

long lashes swept her cheek.

Helen started; a bright crimson flush passed over her face, and

bending low, she kissed the child’s forehead reverentially.

“About the crucifixion, please,” said Mary, as Helen seated herself

by her side.

That Holy Book! Helen felt as if her hands were “unclean.” She

began to read; perhaps the print might not have been clear; but she

stopped often, and drew her small hand across her eyes. Her voice

grew tremulous. Years of worldliness had come between her and that

sad, touching story. It came upon her now with startling force and

freshness. Earth, with its puerile cares and pleasures, dwindled to a

point. Oh, what “cross” had her shoulders borne? What “crown of thorns”

had pierced her brows? How had her careless feet turned aside from the

footsteps of Calvary’s meek sufferer!

“Thank you,” said little Mary, rousing Helen from her reverie; “mamma

used to pray to God to make me patient, and take me to Heaven.”

Tears started to Helen’s eyes. How could she tell that sinless little

one she _knew not how to pray_? Ah! _she_ was the pupil, Mary the

teacher! Laying her cheek to hers, she said in a soft whisper, “Pray

for _us both_, dear Mary.”

With sweet, touching, simple eloquence that little silvery voice

floated on the air! The little emaciated hand upon which Helen’s face

was pressed, was wet with tears--_happy_ tears! Oh, this was what that

restless soul had craved! Here at “the cross,” that world-fettered

spirit should plume itself for an angel’s ceaseless flight. Aye, and a

little _child had led “her” there_!

* * * * *

Adolph Grey wandered listlessly through that brilliant ball-room.

There were sweet voices, and sweeter faces, and graceful, floating

forms; but his eye rested on none of them.

“Pray, where is Lady Helen?” said he, wandering up to his gay

hostess, with a slight shade of embarrassment.

“Ah, you may well ask that! I’m _so_ vexed at her! Every man in the

room is as savage as a New Zealander. She has turned Methodist, that’s

all. Just imagine; our peerless Helen thumbing greasy hymn-books at

vestry meetings, listening to whining preachers, and hunting up poor

dirty beggar children! I declare, I thought she had too much good

sense. Well, there it is; and you may as well hang _your_ harp on the

willows. She’ll have nothing to say to you _now_; for you know you are

a sinner, Grey.”

“Very true,” said Grey, as he went into the ante-room to cloak

himself for a call upon Helen; “I _am_ a sinner; but if any woman

can make a saint of me, it is Lady Helen. I have looked upon women

only as toys to pass away the time; but under that gay exterior of

Helen’s there was always something to which my better nature bowed in

reverence. ‘A Methodist,’ is she? Well, be it so. She has a soul above

yonder frivolity, and I respect her for it.”

* * * * *

If in after years the great moral questions of the day had more

interest for Adolph Grey than the pleasures of the turf, the billiard

room, or the wine party, who shall say that Lady Helen’s influence was

not a blessed one?

Oh, if woman’s beauty, and power, and witchery were oftener used for

a high and holy purpose, how many who now bend a careless knee at her

shrine, would hush the light laugh and irreverent jest, and almost

feel, as she passed, _that an angel’s wing had rustled by!_

DOLLARS AND DIMES.

“Dollars and dimes, dollars and dimes,

An empty pocket is the worst of crimes.”

Yes; and don’t you presume to show yourself anywhere, until you get

it filled. “Not among good people?” No, my dear Simplicity, not among

“good people.” They will receive you with a galvanic ghost of a smile,

scared up by an indistinct recollection of the “ten commandments,”

but it will be as short-lived as their stay with you. You are not

welcome--that’s the amount of it. They are all in a perspiration lest

you should be delivered of a request for their assistance, before they

can get rid of you. They are “very busy,” and what’s more, they always

will be busy when you call, until you get to the top of fortune’s

ladder.

Climb, man! climb! Get to the top of the ladder, though adverse

circumstances and false friends break every round in it! and see what

a glorious and extensive prospect of human nature you’ll get when you

arrive at the summit! Your gloves will be worn out shaking hands with

the very people who didn’t recognize your existence two months ago.

“You must come and make me a long visit;” “you must stop in at any

time;” “_you’ll_ always be welcome;” it is such a _long_ time since

they had the pleasure of a visit from you, that they begin to fear you

never intended to come; and they’ll cap the climax by inquiring with an

injured air, “if you are nearsighted, or why you have so often passed

them in the street without speaking.”

Of course, you will feel very much like laughing in their faces,

and so you can. You can’t do anything wrong, now that your “pocket is

full.” At the most, it will only be “an eccentricity.” You can use

anybody’s neck for a footstool, bridle anybody’s mouth with a silver

bit, and have as many “golden opinions” as you like. You won’t see a

frown again between this and your tombstone!

OUR NELLY.

“Who is she?” “Why, that is our Nelly, to be sure. Nobody ever passed

Nelly without asking, ‘Who is she?’ One can’t forget the glance of that

blue eye; nor the waving of those golden locks; nor the breezy grace of

that lithe figure; nor those scarlet lips; nor the bright, glad sparkle

of the whole face; and then, she is not a bit proud, although she steps

so like a queen; she would shake hands just as quick with a horny palm

as with a kid glove. The world can’t spoil ‘our Nelly;’ her heart is in

the right place.

“You should have seen her thank an old farmer, the other day, for

clearing the road that she might pass. He shaded his eyes with his

hand when she swept by, as if he had been dazzled by a sudden flash

of sunlight, and muttered to himself, as he looked after her--‘Won’t

she make somebody’s heart ache?’ Well, she has; but it is because from

among all her lovers she could marry but one, and (God save us!) that

her choice should have fallen upon Walter May. If he don’t quench out

the love-light in those blue eyes, my name is not John Morrison. I’ve

seen his eyes flash when things didn’t suit him; I’ve seen him nurse

his wrath to keep it warm till the smouldering embers were ready for

a conflagration. He’s as vindictive as an Indian. I’d as soon mate

a dove with a tiger, as give him ‘our Nelly.’ There’s a dozen noble

fellows, this hour, ready to lay down their lives for her, and yet out

of the whole crowd she must choose Walter May! Oh, I have no patience

to think of it. Well-a-day! mark my words, he will break her heart

before a twelvemonth! He’s a pocket edition of Napoleon.”

* * * * *

A year had passed by, and amid the hurry of business and the din of

the great city, I had quite forgotten Glenburn and its fairy queen.

It was a time to recall her to mind, that lovely June morning--with

its soft fleecy clouds, its glad sunlight, its song of birds, and its

breath of roses; and so I threw the reins on Romeo’s neck, that he

might choose his own pace down the sweet-briar path, to John Morrison’s

cottage. And there sat John, in the doorway, smoking his pipe, with

Towser crouched at his feet, in the same old spot, just as if the sun

had never gone down behind the hills since I parted with him.

“And ‘our Nelly?’” said I, taking up the thread of his year-old

narrative as though it had never been broken--“and ‘our Nelly?’”

“Under the sod,” said the old man, with a dark frown; “under the

sod. He broke her heart, just as I told you he would. Such a bridal as

it was! I’d as lief have gone to a funeral. And then Walter carried

her off to the city, where she was as much out of her element as a

humming-bird in a meeting-house; and tried to make a fine lady of her,

with stiff, city airs, and stiff, city manners. It was like trying to

fetter the soft west wind, which comes and goes at its own sweet will;

and Nelly--who was only another name for _Nature_--pined and drooped

like a bird in a darkened cage.

“One by one her old friends dropped off, wearied with repeated and

rude repulses from her moody husband, till he was left, as he desired,

master of the field. It was astonishing the ascendency he gained over

his sweet wife, contemptible as he was. She made no objection to his

most absurd requirements; but her step lost its spring, her eye its

sparkle; and one might listen long for her merry-ringing laugh. Slowly,

sadly to Nelly came that terrible conviction from which a wife has no

appeal.

“Ah! there is no law to protect woman from negative abuse!--no

mention made in the statute book (which _men frame for themselves_),

of the constant dropping of daily discomforts which wear the loving

heart away--no allusion to looks or words that are like poisoned

arrows to the sinking spirit. No! if she can show no mark of brutal

fingers on her delicate flesh, he has fulfilled his legal promise to

the letter--to love, honor and cherish her. _Out_ on such a mockery of

justice!

“Well, sir; Nelly fluttered back to Glenburn, with the broken wing

of hope, to die! So wasted! so lovely! The lips that blessed _her_,

could not choose but curse _him_. ‘She leaned on a broken reed,’ said

her old gray-haired father, as he closed her blue eyes forever. ‘May

God forgive him, for I never can,’ said an old lover, whose heart was

buried in her grave.

“‘NELLY MAY, _aged_ 18.’

“You’ll read it in the village churchyard, Sir. Eighteen! Brief

years, Sir, to drain all of happiness Life’s cup could offer!”